


Teatime with Tea

by Aleph (Immatrael)



Series: Gamesverse [2]
Category: Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha | Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha
Genre: Gen, Hilarity, In the style of a news report, Recap fic, which they're not very good at
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-01
Updated: 2013-04-01
Packaged: 2018-01-12 09:49:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1184802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Immatrael/pseuds/Aleph
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Toted as "The Super Mega Best Bestest Recap of Anything Ever", Teana Lanster and Alicia Testarossa recount the thrilling events of Game Theory. And along the way, have a few slight disagreements. Featuring guest appearances by Vesta Takamachi and Sir Wilhemston the Belkan knight.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Teatime with Tea

“Hello!” a little girl in a business suit says, sitting bolt upright on a high-backed chair designed for an adult. The desk she is sitting at is similarly sized, and she has to lean upwards to shuffle the papers in front of her. “How nice of you to drop by! It’s teatime!” She grins. “You get it? It’s a joke! Well, apparently it’s a spelling joke. So when I say it out loud, it isn’t very funny, but when it’s written down, it’s meant to be funnier. That’s what my brother said, but all in all I don’t think his sense of humour is one gazillionth as good as mine! But I still did it anyway because I couldn’t fit ‘Kaiser Teana’s Super Amazing Talk Show Which Is The Best One Ever’ onto the cards. Which is sad.”

She pauses for breath briefly, then continues.

“Also? The joke only works in Anglish, which is a language which is spoken on some planet somewhere where my brother had to go for work and he had to pretend he was from a country which spoke Anglish and he bought me a guide book as one of my presents. Anglish must be a special language spoken by people who fish, because it’s the same word in that language. So maybe it’s a language spoken so they can... like, talk to fish. So it’s probably like ‘Tea, glub glub, bubble, bubble. I am a fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiish. Please eat this worm, tea, bubble bubble glub.’ Because that’s what I’d say to the fish if I was trying to catch them because that would totally be the most cunningist way of tricking them into being caught.”

A faint scratching noise is heard from the earpiece she was wearing. “What? No, I’m not getting distracted _actually_. I’m talking about something which is super-mega-interesting _actually_ and people who don’t like it are wrong and stupid.” More scritching comes as the little girl’s face twists into a pout. “Fiiiiine,” she says sulkily, before turning to face the camera again. “The meanie who is up in the talking box says that I need to keep on doing what I’m meant to be doing, or else they won’t let me do it again... which is super-mega-mean, you know? Almost as mean as why I’m still not allowed a pet kitten! Well, anyway. Today, on Teatime with Tea, we have a super-special guest and she’s coming to talk about all kinds of big and special stuff which happened recently. Also, me an’ her will have tea and biscuits and stuff together along with Sir Wilhemston,” she added. “So, everyone, say ‘hello’ to Alicia Testarossa!”

To applause from the studio audience, a little girl in a blue dress walks on. Her long blonde hair is neatly plaited, and she is smiling broadly.

“Hello!” she sing-songs, waving at the camera. “I’m very happy to be here today on the Interviewing Alicia panel...”

“Teatime with Tea,” the redheaded girl host corrects her. Alicia sticks her tongue out and continues as if she hadn’t heard as she walks up to the desk and takes a seat. “I’m very happy to be here today, and... I hope you’ll all take good care of me! That’s what Big Sis Nanoha said when she joined our new school... oh, but that’s later.”

“Yes it is,” nods Tea. “Because what we’re doing here is telling you all about what happened in the Scary Jewel Seed Incident of Doom. Which isn’t _actually_ what it was called, but it should have been because that’s a way more interesting name than just the boring old ‘Jewel Seed Incident’ or whatever weird long number thingy they gave it which my big brother had to write in his reports.” She makes a face. “Bleagh. When I’m a super-awesome TSAB commander-general-captain, I won’t have to write any reports. I’ll make other people do them, and tell them off if they get anything wrong.”

“I wish I could do that with homework,” Alicia comments wistfully. She receives a glare from her co-host, along with a hiss of “remember, not till later!”, and falls quiet.

“So! The Scary Evil Jewel Seed Incident of Doom and Destruction!” Tea presses a button, and the program switches to a slideshow. The first slide does indeed have the aforementioned title written on it in big letters. It is underlined thrice, and someone has pencilled in another couple of additional exclamation marks.

Tea continues through a voiceover, as the slide switches to a rather childish drawing of the dimensional sea, with a ship flying through it. There is a lot of purple in the background.

“Now,” she says, “it all started when a transport carrying the Jewel Seeds...”

“ _Actually,_ ” interrupts Alicia, “it started waaay before that when the Jewel Seeds were made. And you didn’t even explain what they are. Dummy.”

“I was going to! They’re...”

There is an abrupt scuffling sound, and Tea’s voice cuts off. “They’re Lost Logia,” Alicia states with a certain amount of smugness. Loud complaints can be heard in the background, and further scuffling sounds are audible. “Which are really powerful old things that are the technology from ages and ages ago which we don’t understand anymore. Some of them are really dangerous li...”

She is abruptly cut off, and silence reigns for a full minute before sound is re-established. Teana has a distinctly sulky tone as she explains. “Okay, we’ve been told that if we try to steal each other’s headset thingies or start fighting again, we won’t be allowed to keep doing this, so that won’t happen again. Sorry.”

“Yeah, sorry,” agrees Alicia, despite not sounding particularly apologetic. “Anyway, these Jewel Seeds got dug up by a ferret.”

“He’s not _actually_ a ferret,” Tea confides. “He’s really a boy who can turn into a ferret. Or maybe a ferret who can turn into a boy. My brother said he wasn’t a familiar though, so it’s probably the first way round.”

“Oh! Or maybe he wasn't actually a ferret!” suggests Alicia. “Vesta says he's a mousey! Do you think there are girl-ferrets? Maybe they have different names... anyway, he dug up these Jewel Seeds,” continues Alicia, “which are powerful dangerous Lost Logia, and put them on a ship that was going to Midchilda. This one!” A purple circle appears around the ship.

“But then the ship exploded!” Tea exclaims. The screen advances to the next slide, showing a scribbled explosion in reds and oranges where the ship was. “Which means it was pretty silly of him to put the Jewel Seeds on there, really. I mean, when _I_ find lots of Lost Logia when I’m grown up, _I’m_ going to put them on ships that _won’t_ explode.”

“Not if I get them first! Hah!”

“Hmph!” Teana rises above Alicia’s challenge, and continues. “So the Jewel Seeds weren’t broken by the ship exploding. They just got flung away, and they got sent... to Earth!” The slide changes to a blue-ish green ball, with twenty-one carefully drawn purple blobs moving towards it. “That’s what UA-97 is called, apparently. It sounds pretty stupid to me. Why would you call a planet ‘Dirt’? Swee-neth-ee-ode is a much prettier name, and it means something about sparkling sunlight that I can’t remember, which is way nicer than something about dirt. I was there not long ago, but then I had to move again.”

“Oh, oh!” The view switches back to the two girls, and Alicia sticks her hand up. “Actually actually, I asked Nanoha about the name and then she went and found out that quite a few planets are called that in various languages! Like the Galeans named a world ‘Terra’ which means ‘Earth’ as well!” She smiles smugly at the other girl, before her tone loses some of the excitement in favour of sympathy. “But yeah, moving sucks. I just had to move around a lot not long ago, and it’s mean and unfair. And boring.”

“Oh, I know _all about_ moving around,” Teana said, twisting to face the camera. “I have to do it all the time. See, my brother gets put all places for his work in the military and that means I have to move too, and go to a new school. I go to special schools which are on military bases and everyone else at school gets moved around a lot. Except recently when I got moved for a few months from Mid, which was a pain because I like Mid because I often spend time there and so I actually know people and I talk to my friends there when I’m in other places, except now I was like _ten hours_ from Mid and so my friends wouldn’t be able to get a reply back to me for almost a whole _day_ and that meant that we could only exchange videos.”

She sniffed sadly, before brightening. “Oh, but I didn’t have to stay in a new military base in the carer bit when my brother was away this time. I was with a family and they had a really loud baby but it was still better than having to be in the carer place. The mummy of the family was the mummy of Miss Rizu and Miss Mei. I like both of them. Miss Rizu is nice and Miss Mei is funny and we played together when my brother got back from his superspecial secret top secret special mission and and _and_ we got to go back to Mid because he was hurt which was really really good because I got to go to my favouritest school again!” She paused. “I mean, the hurting was bad and all,” she said awkwardly, “but still the school thing is good!”

Alicia glared at her. “Wasn’t this interview meant to be about me and how super-special I am?” she whined.

“... no. But... yeah, the mean guy is saying we should get back on track. So! The ferret-mousey-not-a-familiar boy went hunting the Jewel Seeds to get them back, which I would have done like a thousand times better because I’m awesome, and so I wouldn’t have done what he did which was to _lose_ and get hurt. But then...”

“Oh oh oh!” Alicia bounces in excitement. “I get this bit!” The slideshow comes back, this time displaying a carefully drawn figure in a white dress, with brown hair and blue eyes. It’s holding a staff, though the head seems to have given the artist some trouble and been not-quite-erased and redrawn several times. “Because this is where Nanoha comes in! She’s older than me, because she’s nine, but she’s really cool and good at magic! She met up with the ferrety boy and agreed to help him get the Jewel Seeds, because he couldn’t do it on his own!”

“ _I_ could have done it on my own,” Tea remarks with an air of superiority. The camera cuts back to them briefly as Alicia nods sagely.

“Yes, so could I. But you have to make allowances for more inconti... incompin... incomep... not-as-awesome-as-us people. Besides, he’s only a ferret. He probably couldn’t hold a proper Device with his little paws.”

“I guess that does make sense,” nods Tea. “Poor little ferrets. And you know what?”

“What?”

“I’m going to have a Device one day,” Tea declares solemnly, “and it is going to be the _bestest Device ever_. Even better than the one that the last Priest-King hid away at the end of the Dimensional Sea. In fact, I’m going to _find_ that one, and then I’m going to rebuild it to be _even better_.”

“... nah,” Alicia denies. “Nanoha’s is still better. Hers is called Raising Heart, and it’s a she, and she can talk and everything. And Fate has one called Bardiche which is the same, and...”

“Hmph,” Tea sniffs, interrupting. “Well if your Nanoha was so cool and had such a good Device, how come she didn’t get all the Jewel Seeds?”

“Ah, well, you see,” Alicia said, smirking, “my mama had sent my biglittle sister to find some super ancient magic to save me. And it worked, as you can see, because I’m right here right now.”

“Your biglittle sister?” Tea asked.

“Oh yes!” Alicia said cheerfully. “That’s Fate. See, Fate is my biglittle sister, and I’m her littlebig sister. Because she’s all tall and everything and looks older than me, but really she’s much younger. Because I’m like _thirty_.”

“That is very old,” Tea said, eyes wide. “That’s... like... like almost twice as old as my brother. And he’s ancient. He’s so old I once found his music from when he was my age, and did you know? I didn’t recognise _any_ of the bands.”

“I know,” Alicia said in an awestruck tone. “Like, all the shows I used to watch aren’t being shown any more, and Mama had to get me the boxed sets which were labelled as _classics_ because they were so old. I’m so old, I’m the same age as my biglittle sister’s friend’s _mummy_. I’m so old, I could have had _babies_ if I hadn’t gotten sick and stuff.”

“You could probably even do _adult_ things,” Tea said. “Like driving a car or flying.”

“Oooh, I can fly!” Alicia chirped. “Already!”

Teana pouted. “Well, clearly it’s because you’re so old,” she said. “No other reason. And I’ll be able to fly when I’m old too! Like... really old. Like ten!”

Alicia nodded sagely. “Uh huh,” she agreed, “because Nanoha and Fate are nine, and they can fly, so that's flying age. Oh, except Fate isn't _really_ nine, she's just sort of nine, because she's kind of only about three because she was six when she was made except she also had some of my memories only not as good. That’s why she’s my biglittle sister because for all that she’s really big; she’s only one tenth as old as me.”

She cocks her head, listening to some crackling coming from her earpiece, and affects a put-upon sigh. “Oh, _fine_ ,” she says, “so anyway, Nanoha and Fate wound up fighting over the Jewel Seeds. Bam, pow, zap!” The slide show returns, and progresses through several enthusiastically illustrated mage battles. Yellow and pink take up large portions of the skyline, as well as bits of red-scribbled-over-with-white and orange where the pink and yellow ran out. “Arf was helping too, she’s Fate’s familiar, and is a gigantinormous wolf! But she can also be a little girl and a puppy, or a grown-up, and one of the things she was doing was pretending to be Fate’s mummy so that they could live by themselves in a big room at the top of a really tall building.”

“But!” interrupts Teana, “they did bad stuff! Like, they broke up a hospital a lot, and then they set off a dimensional quake!” The slide show progresses forward to show a pillar of purple light going upwards, with a black dot and a white dot next to it. The words “totally their fault” have been scribbled next to the pillar, with arrows pointing to both dots.

“Hey, you snuck that in there! That wasn’t their fault! Meanie!”

“It totally was their fault! They set it off because they were fighting! You’re just lying to make them look better!”

“Liar!”

A pause, as silence descends and the screen flicks back to the two girls, who are now glaring at one another and paying no attention to the camera. It is broken by the confrontational tones of Teana, as she turns back. “Anyway,” she says challengingly. “They knew that what they’d done was wrong, and that the TSAB would be coming to arrest them for...”

“For not being _meanies_ like the TSAB! They’re bad and wanted to unplug me while I was still asleep! That’s why Big Sis went to Nanoha after the quake, to make sure they didn’t kidnap her and do mean stuff to her for something that wasn’t her fault!”

“You’re just saying bad stuff about the TSAB because you’re jealous or something! Everyone knows that they’re the good guys, _duh_.”

“Well not here they weren’t!”

“Well maybe you’re just saying that because...”

Crackling – loud crackling – bursts out of both earpieces, and the girls stop shouting at one another in surprise. After a few seconds of listening, Teana turns to the camera with a sweet smile.

“Okay, we’re just going to switch to the weather now, ladies and gentlemen and people and things, while we work out who’s right. By which I mean me.”

“Nuh _uh_...”

...

The scene changes to another desk, cutting off Alicia’s last protest. Behind it sits another six-year old girl, with messy grey-and-black hair and cat ears sticking out of her shaggy mop. Behind her is a large map, which is mostly white. She stares glumly at the camera.

“It’s snowing,” she says accusingly. “It’s _always_ snowing. Except when it stops snowing and then it just blows really cold. Weather for today. Snow. Weather for tomorrow. Wind which picks up the snow and is evil and horrible and tries to blow it down the neck of your school uniform because the wind knows that you’re actually a kitten and so it wants to get you. Wind is evil because it doesn’t like kittens who are trying to sunbathe somewhere warm but then it finds out about them and wants to ruin your relaxing-time.”

Vesta sniffs pitifully.

“And let me tell you what else bad happens,” she continued, in a more aggrieved tone. “Then Mistress and Fate and Arf want to go outside in the snow, and it’s _snow!_ You know what snow is? It’s water that’s trying to trick you by pretending to be a solid so you go out in it thinking that the bad water can’t get you. And then wham! Suddenly it’s lured you onto it and you go up so your belly in snow and you can’t move your legs and then everyone _laughs_ at you, but you’re secretly cold and _wet_ and it’s horrible! We need to destroy all snow everywhere!

She pauses, cocking her head reflectively. “Although I’m not sure how you could do that. See, at first I thought you could destroy it by blasting it with magic, but that means it just turns into water, the great enemy. Sometimes you can even turn it into steam if you blast it hard enough, but steam still turns back into water and then it freezes on the floor and turns into a trap which is all slippery and then you fall over because you’ve taken Arf’s laces and are taking them to your hiding place while being chased by her and then the ice traps you and throws you into the wall by not letting you turn when you meant to. Because ice is water and water is evil.

She nods decisively. “So the moral of this story is, ‘Snow is evil, stay inside in the warm.’ The end.”

...

Despite a notable absence of papers on the desk, and somewhat ruffled hair and clothes on the parts of both hosts, the studio is remarkably intact when the camera returns there. Teana and Alicia are pointedly not looking at one another, and instead talk to the camera.

“Okay, we’ve reached a compo... comro... we’ve _agreed_ that to avoid any more fights, I’ll do the stuff with the TSAB and she’ll do the stuff with the criminals,” Teana explains, earning herself a dirty look from the other side of the desk.

“ _Nanoha and Fate_ ,” Alicia takes over, “who are the bestest and bravest people ever, agreed to join forces cause Fate told her all about me and she saw that it was _clearly_ the right thing to do to revive me, because the TSAB wanted me to _die_.”

“But the TSAB had been alerted by the really dangerous dimensional quake which could have hurt _millions and millions_ of people,” Tea interrupts, “so they were coming to see what was going on. And Lindy, who was the captain of the ship only she’s actually a general or an admiral or something, I can’t remember, sent off a message for help to the _real_ bestest bravest strongest person ever, who was my big brother Tiida! Yay Tiida! Oh, and some other people too.”

“So because they showed up – and it was partly because they attacked Nanoha in her house that she joined up with Fate, because anyone who would do that is _clearly_ the baddie – Nanoha had to leave her family behind and go live with Fate. And she came back to the Garden of Time, which is where mama and Fate and Linith and Arf were living.” Alicia presses a button, and an enormous, ominous structure is shown on the screen, floating in the dimensional sea and festooned with spikes and colossal jewels. “We’re going to talk more about that later, so remember it! Anyway, Nanoha talked to mama who told her lots of stuff about what was going on and me being hurt and needing the Jewel Seeds to fix me. So she said okay to that, and then they went back to Earth.”

Tea smirks. “But!” A tap of a button, and the next slide comes up. It shows seven figures, the middle one of which is outlined in a shining aura and meticulously detailed down to the last centimetre. His resemblance is clear, and made plainer by the writing under him that reads ‘Tiida, bestest big brother in the history of ever’. To his left stand a girl with a sword and short green hair, a tall blonde woman, and a lady with purple hair and a cloud of dots hovering around her. Their subtexts are titled ‘Miss Mei’, ‘Blonde Girl Whose Name I Can’t Remember’ and ‘Summoner Lady’. To his right, a dark-skinned girl with a book, a heavily-armoured woman on rollerskates and an enormous man with a spear, subtitled ‘Miss Rizu’, ‘Mrs Quint’ and “Big Scary Guy’.

Under them are drawn a short boy in dark clothing, holding a staff, and a rough attempt at a ferret, outlined in green, flanking a carefully illustrated and rather taller woman with green hair and a cup of tea, sitting in a big chair. Their labels read ‘Captainy-person Lindy’s son’ and ‘Ferret boy’ and ‘Admirabl Lindy (really cool!)’, respectively.

“As you can see,” states Tea proudly, “the TSAB group were really cool and awesome! So the criminals couldn't beat them, and had to run away a lot and let them take the Jewel Seeds!” In the background, Alicia can be heard quietly cursing herself for not drawing a similar picture for her side and rummaging around for some paper and a pencil.

“There was a big dragony papery one, and a little-girl glowing one, and even a giant scary one in a shopping place that...”

“Wait wait wait!” Alicia interrupts, “you’ve gone too far! It’s my turn now! Cause, see, because of the mean nasty TSAB people who were fighting unfairly and outnumbering them even though Nanoha and Fate and Arf were braver, mama said that Nanoha should make a familiar too! And that’s where Vesta came from!”

A hastily-drawn slide comes up, showing a rough sketch of a grey-and-black kitten. Written next to it, with a few insertions in orange pen here and there, is ‘Vesta, (one of) the (two) bestest familiar(s) in the world ever!” Tea hums thoughtfully.

“She _is_ a kitten-familiar,” she muses doubtfully. “So... I guess I can agree with you on that. But my kitten-familiar would be even better.”

“Yeah yeah. Anyway, Vesta was a kitten who one of the Jewel Seeds was in! She was actually there when Nanoha and Fate first met! And she liked Nanoha, so when she was feeling all lonely, Fate took her to Nanoha as a present and then later she made Vesta her familiar! And that’s how she got to be my friend today! She’s really cool!”

A brief image flashes on-screen, with Vesta giving the camera an enthusiastic thumbs-up. The subtitle reads ‘This opinion carries the Vesta Seal of Approval.’

“Are you done now?” demands Teana. Alicia considers carefully, then shrugs.

“Yeah, I guess. For now.”

Tea rolls her eyes, and flicks her hair back. “Okay. So the last Jewel Seed on the land was in a shopping centre, and that was all scary and weird. And... Nanoha,” she glances smugly at Alicia, “helped beat it. Because she was almost coming round to the right side! Mrs Quint had a big talk with her, and she nearly decided to help the TSAB like she should have been all along.” She speeds up, as Alicia starts hissing at her in barely-suppressed fury. “But even though Mrs Quint had a lot of good points she didn’t convince Nanoha so she ended up running back to the others and didn’t join the TSAB okay fine it’s your turn again, happy?”

Alicia gave her a cool stare. “Just for that,” she said haughtily, “I get to say the next TSAB bit. Because you broke the rules by saying the stuff about Nanoha, which you weren’t allowed to. Right, Mr Person in the Box?” She listens to her earpiece for a second, then nods smugly. “So there.”

“So Nanoha and Fate and Arf and Vesta were better than they had been... oh, I forgot! Yeah, what happened next was, the TSAB _cheated_. They’d put bugs on all of Nanoha’s family and friends so that she couldn’t talk to them without being found – real actual bugs, from a summoner lady who summoned bugs! Eww! Bugs are icky! And two of her friends who cared about her were looking for her, and they saw her going into the hotel place where she and Fate were staying! So the TSAB found them, and then they attacked them!” The slide advances again, to show a tall building with the top floor engulfed in an explosion. “In their home! At night, when they were meant to be asleep!” Alicia’s tone is one of outrage and horror, and though Teana makes a feeble protest, the blonde girl glares her into submission.

“But even though the TSAB used _evil, underhanded_ tactics like that, Nanoha and Fate were just too awesome to be beaten! Even when they used mean, wicked cheating, they still failed! So Nanoha and Big Sis escaped, but they had to leave behind all their stuff. And now they didn’t even have anywhere to live! So that’s when they came up with a _plan_.”

“A bad plan,” Tea comments idly. Alicia bangs on the table, rising to her feet in outrage.

“Argh, I’ve had it with you! I already said you’re not meant to talk during my bits! And it was not! It was a brilliant plan!”

“Was so!” Tea responds, rising likewise. “Even Arf and Vesta said so! It was a stupid plan!”

“You’re lying!” declares Alicia hotly. “It was a great plan, and just because it didn’t work...”

“Not working is what _makes_ a plan stupid, stupid!”

“Well... well you’re stupid, you meanie!”

“Well you’re a meanie, you weirdo!”

The air crackles as the two lock glares. A warning crackle from their earpieces heads things off before the argument can get restarted, however, and they gradually settle down, ruffled feathers settling slowly.

“... see,” continues Alicia with a wary glance at Teana, “the rest of the Jewel Seeds – I think there were five of them – were in the sea, down with the fishies and the crabs. I wanted a pet crab once, because then I could pretend to scuttle about sideways everywhere and say I was learning his ways! Hee. But mama said I couldn’t have one, so she just got me a toy one instead, and I carried him around on my head for a few months. But he’s gone now, like the rest of my toys.” She pouts sadly, and Tea leans across to pat her on the shoulder in a rare moment of sympathy.

“You may be wrong about a lot of stuff,” she says sympathetically, “but nobody deserves to have their toys taken away like that. I’m sorry for you.”

Alicia nods bravely, and continues. “So because they were in the ocean, nobody could find them. Because have you ever tried to look for a bluey-purpley thing in a bluey-purpley-greeny-browny tank of water? It’s really hard! And this wasn’t just a tank, it was a whole sea! So they couldn’t find them easily. And that’s why Nanoha thought, ‘why not just make them come to us?’!”

She bounces excitedly, warming up to the topic as she explains. “That’s because Jewel Seeds sort of wake up when they get magic pushed into them. But if you wake them up early, they’re all stunned and fuzzy and slow! Like Big Sis is in the mornings! She’s all stumbling around and moaning like a zombie. ‘Graaah,’ she goes, ‘I am zombie Fate! I’m not properly awake until after I’ve gone out in the cold for a bit and had something to eat or drink!’ It’s very silly compared to me, because I’m fine as soon as I get up, like Nanoha. But I guess my biglittle sister can’t be as good as me in every way. Anyway, this was a good thing with the Jewel Seeds, because it meant that Nanoha and Fate could wake them up early and then get them while they were all staggering about and asking Arf to make them some coco and muttering under their breath about how it was too bright and they were still too tired to be up this early!”

“But it didn’t work!” Tea objected. “That’s the whole thing about it! It went wrong, because one of the Jewel Seeds was eviller than they thought so it sucked up all the magic and went _huge!_ And then they had a big battle where it pulled up a submarine that they wouldn’t have won if my big brother hadn’t been there, and the summoner lady had to summon her giantest summon and it made her have a baby!”

She paused at this, cocking her head. So did Alicia.

“... is that how babies work, then?” ventured the latter after a while. “They come when you summon giant monsters on people?”

“I don’t... think so.” Teana frowned. “I mean, most of the people I know have mummies, and not many of them can summon giant monsters. I think.” She considered this. “Then again,” she amended, “I wouldn’t be surprised if Aunty Sara could summon a giant monster. She’s as scary as one sometimes.”

“Maybe the monster left the baby behind when it was beaten?” Alicia ventured. “You know, like how they drop treasure. Oh, or maybe it’s not a giant monster _specifically_ , it’s just spending loads and loads of magic?” She bit her lip. “And... and you have to be _old_ to have a baby, so Nanoha and Fate don’t do it, but old people like the summoner lady do?”

“I guess that could be it,” Teana said. “... yeah. Yeah, that sounds kind of right. Maybe the baby is like... a bonus with the magic. Like... spend a lot of magic, get a baby free!” Her eyes widened. “Wow. Aunty Sara has had _three_ babies. She must be _really_ powerful.”

Alicia tapped her finger to her lips. “Ah!” she said. “But I know there's another place babies come from. See, when your mama wants a new baby, she gets a special tank and then the baby grows in it and when it's done it comes out.”

Teana frowned. “Are you sure?” she asked sceptically. “That sounds a little bit like a story, not something real.”

“It was a _magic_ tank,” Alicia revealed. “Which _glowed_.”

“Ohhh. Right,” Tea nodded, as if that made all the difference.

There is a crackle from the earpieces, and Alicia coughs. “Right right,” she says, “the man in the box says that we’re almost out of time and so we need to be super quick if we want to meet the submission deadline.”

“Yep,” Tea says, nodding seriously. “So the TSAB can follow the magical purple lightning that Alicia’s mama fired at stuff back to her super-secret lair. And they get more reinforcements because some of them were moving up anyway because admirable Lindy only has a few ships because the silly Earth planet is at the back end of nowhere and despite the fact she’s really cool she’s not that important for an admirable. So a more important admirable who’s also from Earth but...” she shoots a glance at Alicia, “not not-working for the TSAB goes and gets more help and sends his super-powerful cat familiar to replace the summoner lady who has to look after her baby.”

“And that’s really dangerous,” Alicia says, “but luckily Mama still has superiority in the cat field because she has two cats on her side and the TSAB only has one. Still, the TSAB stopped a cat gap from opening and that makes them much, much more dangerous according to Vesta.”

“Yes. So the brave heroic TSAB arrive just as Alicia’s mama starts her very dangerous ritual and begin the attack because they don’t want her to kill a hundred squintillion people which is the biggest number ever.”

“And just as the mean horrible TSAB arrive, she’s getting started to save me, so she puts Nanoha to protect the outside because Nanoha is very good at blowing things up and Linith says that Nanoha is,” Alicia affects an accent, “ahem, ‘sometimes a little bit lacking in care’ and also where she goes things sometimes blow up even when they’re not meant to like landscape and hospitals and stuff and she didn’t want things blowing up inside the Garden, while my biglittle sister is inside because she’s really fast and so she can go zooooooooooooooooom around!”

Teana folds her arms smugly. “Only Nanoha _did_ still manage to blow things up inside the Garden, despite not having any weapons inside,” she says triumphantly. “Lots and lots of things!”

“It wasn’t her fault!” Alicia protests.

“Yeah, it totally was. She blew up a really important thingie in it.”

Alicia sputters. “Well... she did it to save your stupid TSAB people on the ships!”

“That is true,” Tea admits, “but she was the one who turned on the thingie which she had to protect them from.”

“But saving people from something you accidentally did in the first place has to count for something,” Alicia says.

“... okay, so... like, she gets half points for it?” Tea asks, looking up at the clock with narrowed eyes.

“Yeah, let’s say that,” Alicia says quickly, before grinning. “And then since everything goes wrong and stuff blows up, she also goes and saves _your_ brother and since you say he’s the best person ever that means you have to say she gets a billion million trillion points which more than makes up for a few small explosions of things which didn’t really matter anyway.”

“My brother says the ferret boy wouldn’t agree,” Tea half-heartedly protests, “but I guess... if she saved my brother from a giant metal ape monster thing, she can’t be all that bad and surely if she gave herself in she’d hardly get any punishment at all because she’s such a hero.” Tea looks sad. “But even when she was given a chance after the TSAB had cornered her and taken out one of the cat-familiars – using their own cat which shows the TSAB cats are better...”

“Are not! She cheated!”

“Are too! And anywayNanohaDidn’tSurrenderWhenSheCouldHave,” Teana blurts out all in one breath. “And then they blew up the whole Garden! Which was not the TSAB’s fault! At all!”

“It was the bestest most cunningist trap ever ever ever,” Alicia cheers. “It fooled _everyone_ in the stupid TSAB so now they think we’re all dead and we’re safe and I’m going to a new school on a really cold planet and have new names and my Mama teleported everyone away onto a secret ship she had waiting for herself in the Dimensional Sea and so we won and the TSAB lost, but in a good way because no one died.”

“They blew up a priceless space station and are all a bunch of lying liars who tricked people,” Teana says sulkily. “That was the end of the Super Mega Evil Bad Doom Jewel Doom Incident of Evil Doom.”

“So we won,” Alicia says sunnily. “The end.”

And with that, the screen turned black and the credits began to roll.

...

 

**Teatime with Tea / Interviewing Alicia**

**Teana Lanster  
– _Herself_**

**Alicia Testarossa  
– _Herself_**

**Vesta Takamachi  
– _Herself_**

**Camera Work  
– _Arf Testarossa_**

**Art Design  
– _Teana Lanster & Alicia Testarossa_**

**Set Design  
– _Teana Lanster_**

**Food Selection  
– _Arf Testarossa_**

**Lightning  
– _Precia & Fate Testarossa_**

**Editors, Directors, & Mean People On The Other Side of The Earpiece  
– _The Beleaguered Authors_**

 

...

“Oh,” Alicia adds, over the credits, “and there was one last thing. See, there was this final bit which no one was allowed to know about where it turned out that the super-important admirable who helped Lindy was actually doing something suspicious with his cat familiars, but no one knew about it. It’s all shocking!”

“I know!” Tea agrees sadly. “Who could ever think that a TSAB person could do something bad?”

“Well, I was more thinking about the idea that a cat familiar – let alone two cat familiars – could be bad because Vesta told me that all cats are automatically the good guys, unless they’re facing another better cat, like her,” Alicia says. “But that’s all we have time for and also we ran out of material. So. Tea. You said something about tea and biscuits.”

“Mmm hmm!” the little girl nods. “With Sir Wilhemston,” she says, recovering a woollen lamb from behind her chair. “He’s a Belkan knight and he’s a master of big swords you have to hold with both hands which can turn into chains and his sword is made out of magic.” Teana hugs him closer. “My daddy knitted him for me before he died,” she adds softly. “He always keeps me safe.”

“He must be really brave,” Alicia says, picking up a cup. “More coco for you, Mr Wilhemston?”


End file.
